Why is it so hard to find honest game reviews?

[Fusionxl]

Is Black Ops really getting so much hate only because it's what all the cool kids are doing these days? I got meself a copy yesterday just to check it out and to my amazement it's actually pretty damn sweet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no stereotypical ADHD brat who will get psyched about every FPS as long as there are plenty of loud kabooms and flashy lights. I love good RPGs, in my childhood I spent years playing X-COM and various tycoon games. EVE has been my cruel mistress for the past 4 years.

And yet, Black Ops is simply...fun. That boat section? Good stuff. Rappelling down a cliff and kicking people in the face? Great. Flying an assault helicopter? Awesome. Picking off unaware soviets with a crossbow? Fricken' sweet. The action could do with some quieter moments to let us catch a breath and admire the HD scenery, but I truly did enjoy the vast majority of every mission.

Sure, Black Ops doesn't contribute anything truly major to the gaming landscape and it definitely didn't change my view of the universe, but the roller coaster shooter genre Activision has been tinkering with for the past decade is so finely tuned and enjoyable I simply cannot spew any hate towards Black Ops. There were absolutely no moments when I felt the game screwed me over. Every objective made sense and I never felt lost or frustrated.

It's unimaginative? Fair enough.
The story is somewhere between cliché and ridiculous? Yeah, cannot really disagree.
It has been done before? More times than you can count.

But, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad game. For a rail shooter it's extremely well designed and polished and I found it much much more enjoyable than, say, Bad Company 2.

So that's my 2 cents, whatever they're worth to you. I did only play the single player so if the multiplayer somehow turns everything upside down then fair enough, but I don't usually like to play competitive FPS multiplayer games. Aside from Team Fortress 2 I suppose.

 

[C95J]

so exclusive interviews = dishonest reviews?

maybe your friends say it is good because it is good? it seems to me like your just trying too hard to find a BAD review of it so it would give you an excuse not to buy it. But that is just from my perspective I might be wrong...

 

[justnotcricket]

It sounds like you *want* the game to be panned, regardless of whether it's honest or not. Which makes it sounds like you've actually played some or seen some played, and disliked it, in which case what do you need a review for?

Reviews are inherently subjective. I'll follow the others here who have tipped their hat to Yahtzee - his critiques (because they're not really reviews in the usual sense)are nothing if not brutally honest, usually to the point of hyperbole.

Failing that, you're probably never going to find one perfect review. Just read a couple, take a look on YouTube, then give the game a try. Your opinion will never be identical to anyone else's anyway. Make yourself the reviewer.

 

[StriderShinryu]

As others have said, it really sounds less like you're looking for an "honest" review than you're looking for a review that confirms your preconceptions and biases about the game in question.

Either way, my personal system for looking up reviews is to go with a few sites that I do like. For me this includes Kotaku, G4 and The Escapist (assuming the glacially slow Escapist actually posts it's review before I have already made up my mind). If those reviews satisfy me, I make my decision. If not, I go to gamerankings.com or metacritic and read the reviews with both the highest and lowest scores to see the widest disparity of opinions.

I tend not to read user reviews for anything more than entertainment value as I tend to find they trend more towards either blatant fanboyism or Yahtzee wannabeism without much real or believable criticism.

 

[thedeathscythe]

Why are they not honest if they liked the game? They got exclusive interviews so that people that do like the game or who are anticipating it will have something to salivate over. If you like a band and you see they have certain exclusive content on a site, live shows on yahoo or something, do you instantly stop trusting any reviewer on that website? I mean, they gotta have it in for the band if they got that exclusive content.

You're finding reasons to hate it, and you won't be satisfied with any review until you find one that thinks it is subpar. And it's valid to think that, it's an opinion, but when generally everyone seems to be enjoying the game, you are assuming they're all dishonest.

 

[Polaris19]

In the end, a review is an opinion. There are certain things that can just be reviewed easily in a game, AI, bugs, that sort of stuff. While most reviewers try to put their personal feelings aside, most have how they feel carry some weight as to what they score it.

Honestly my opinion on Black Ops is this:

It's a good game that redeems some of the balance issues MW2 had and it is certainly a fun game to play. Wager matches are an interesting little addition, the campaign, while a bit disjointed, is also a blast. But if you've never liked Call of Duty before, this one will not change your mind. It is more of the same, with a few tweaks and adjustments, as well as a few new additions.

 

[Frotality]

they are reviewed well because they are popular. halo:ce was reveiwed well because it was the first FPS on the xbox to appeal to a wide group of people; it had the benefit of being 'revolutionary' simply because it was the first decent FPS of the next generation. every halo game that followed gets reviewed well because its pretty much more of the same with better graphics; and reviewers refuse to realize that now and days halo is actually pretty bland and uninspired, but continuing off of the unique and undeserved praise of the original, they hold that quite mediocre gameplay in high regard, and rate the continuing mediocre gameplay in equally undeserved high regard.

same deal with black ops. modern warfare came when everyone was sick of WW2 FPSs and brought the series into... modern warfare; not much had improved beyond the technical improvements that should be pre-requisites to improving gameplay in a sequel, but because the concept was 'new and bold' (like a violent game somehow being a big deal because its on the wii), it is given praise far beyond what it actually should get (shut up; MW1 was actually a good game, im glad we agree, but far from the 9s and 10s it got). therefore, its sequels are praised thru the same rose-tinted glasses.

so in short; a decent, possibly somewhat good, but cut and dry game comes along at just the right time to be seen as much better than it is, and sequels which improve jack shit are praised for doing just that; staying the same.

honestly though, from a technical standpoint these games deserve perfect scores. thats likely because once move-aim-shoot is done, the developers have several assloads of budget left due to its popularity, and with no ambition to add gameplay elements or anything that isnt a safe design choice, spend it all on polishing the move-aim-shoot to blinding perfection.... but still.

yahtzee is your best bet of course...he never played the first halo by the time he got halo 3, so he saw it for the utterly average game that it was.

no, im not hating these games because they are popular; while popular things are generally so just because they appeal to the lowest common denominator, on very rare occasion they actually are good. GoW actually did something new (cover-based combat) and did it well, and deserves all the praise it got. again, the sequels change jack shit, and everyone and their mother has to copy cover-based shooting now, but it wasnt just a conveniently released piece of mediocrity; it actually innovated, and did so in a way that was almost universally liked.

your friends cannot be trusted of course; CoD is a social phenomenon, and some people are gonna like it because everyone else likes it, in that strange senseless cycle of cultural popularity that i oh so despise. black ops is safe, it doesnt do anything new, it is again MW in a new wrapper, and somehow thats all some people want. 'professional' reviewers pretty much only care to be the first review seen; the content of the review, especially when considering popular games, is rushed and secondary to actually just getting that score to be seen, whatever it is. an honest review...you would have to find someone unaffected by the ridiculous social pressure to deem it good; someone like yahtzee, who can review the game from a relatively neutral, relatively sane perspective. most reviews are indeed done for the intended audience; an RPG isnt reviewed by the standards of a casual FPS player, and CoD...is, because thats who its made for. a casual crowd demographic is a very different beast from more dedicated hobbyist gamers....like connoisseurs of cinema, we have very different expectations from those just wanting to be entertained for 2 hours. we have an interest in the medium as a whole, we are interested in its development, how its going to evolve, what direction its going in....things the people who go to see jackass 3D dont generally consider or care about. gaming is still far from a respected medium however; we dont have the luxury of being able to separate the art from the entertainment to the general population, so video game reviews are never really be objective, because gamers of different tastes and expectations are still lumped together. a review deemed appropriate by some 8yr old CoD brat might seem outright outrageous to you, just as a review of a good rpg (i cant really think of any recent examples...sad) could seem right on the money to me and make no sense to that child.

 

[gabe12301]

Alternate thread title: "I don't trust reviewers who don't agree with me"

I don't trust them even when they do agree with me, oddly enough.

 

[MrJohnson]

MY GOD EVERYONE ELSE IS STUPID BECAUSE I'M NOT PRETENTIOUS IN THE BIT AND TASTE IS NOT SUBJECTIVE!

 

[gabe12301]

MY GOD EVERYONE ELSE IS STUPID BECAUSE I'M NOT PRETENTIOUS IN THE BIT AND TASTE IS NOT SUBJECTIVE!

holy crap you can read minds?! 0_0

jk But seriously I could understand how that was misinterpreted.

 

[Atheist.]

If you liked the previous ones, you'll definitely like the new one. If you didn't like the old ones, you have no new reasons to like it.

 

[Racecarlock]

Lately I've been trying to find an honest review of Black Ops. I can't trust Gameinformer or IGN because they got all the exclusive interviews and stuff like that so they're not going to be honest.

Even friends can't be trusted.For example in my school I can't find one Ps3 owner that will ever say anything other than "Black ops is so awesome the story is soooo great." and 360 owners have their minds clouded by Reach.

Even if they bought both consoles and a Super-PC, they may have been counting down the days until release, have every game in the series, and will probably say it's the best thing ever even if in the game they got rickroll'd .

This isn't just Black ops, it's almost all popular games ALL OF THEM.This will probably never end until someone makes some sort of miracle game that everyone enjoys and that won't happen anytime soon.

Try the game review sections at gamefaqs. The gamers there aren't pro or anything, so they're almost always honest. And not one game on there got perfect scores from every gamer. So yeah, gamefaqs is your site there. There's also a user reviews forum here.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I have this same problem when I drive. I drive on the correct side of the road while everybody else drives on the wrong side.

 

[Super Toast]

Because it's not. Rent the game and form your own opinion.

 

[Firetaffer]

What do you mean 'honest?'

Any review is a biased review.

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

Go with Yahtzee or X-Play.They have never failed me.

 

[Entreri481]

google noobtoob, they have a great podcast and are extremely unbiased.